Monthly Archives: February 2014

The new build is out now on Steam, and will be available this evening on Humble.

Well, it’s the end of an era. For many months we’ve been releasing a new NPC with each update and now – finally – the cast of Sir is complete: meet The Landowner.

This update is a huge internal milestone for us as it represents the last piece of new behavioural code, the last set of animations, the last character to enter our procedurally generated world. We still have more content to come in the form of the Castle Biome, but the vast bulk of Sir’s assets are now complete.

Why is this important? Because it means we’ve had time to really start tinkering with the variables!

This update has seen some really tight focus on core AI behaviour, most noticeably in the Hunters – our most behaviourally-complex AI. You should see big improvements to Hunter combat behaviour, the way they handle cover and corners, but also to their non-combat states. Several improvements were made to the way AI investigate noise and as such distraction items should be more reliable and more rigorously investigated. Our robots have also had their eyes recalibrated, the ranges they will engage and pursue you from should feel much fairer now. That’s not to say we’ve made things easier. There is – of course – the new threat of the Landowner. But the new AI code changes can actually make the bots tougher in some situations, more tricksy.

There are also some new features to play with! The Toy Train now has a secondary “Moving” function mode (as with all items, “Right Mouse” to activate secondary functions) allowing you to set it trundling off in a particular direction rather than remaining static on a track. This can be a great way to lead robots away from – or into – certain areas. Cue conga-lines of robots chasing tooting trains…

Following the successful response to last-update’s TrackIR support we’ve also added a key for independent head-movement just using a key modifier. If you hold down “Left Alt” (default) you can now look around while continuing to move in a different direction. It’s like TrackIR, without TrackIR!

There are also some under-the-hood things for modder/tweaker types to play with which we’ll talk about more in the BR forums if you’re interested…

All in all this release feels great. The cast is complete. They’re starting to behave properly, and we only have one biome and customisation options to go before we’re content complete and we can start calling this a beta…

As always feedback on the forums is very gratefully received. Enjoy!

IMPORTANT NOTES:

We recommend you generate a new world to take advantage of new features. Also: stuff might break on old saves.

Changes

– NEW – Landowner NPC.

– NEW – Support for controllers in menus (still not inventories yet, soon!)

– NEW – Free-Look key modifier. Holding “Left Alt” (by default) will allow you move your head independently from the body, simulating TrackIR use for those without that hardware. Only works if TrackIR not running or toggled on.

– Toy Train now has “Moving” mode as well as “Static” (Right Mouse default).